Open Licences and Creative Commons

Open licences grant permission to access, reuse and redistribute a work with few or no restrictions. It doesn't mean that a creator gives up their rights to their material. It works to protect their rights in the digital environment, by giving them some control over how their work is acknowledged and used.

Creative Commons (CC) is perhaps the most well known of the open licensing systems used. Their free copyright licences provide creators with a simple, standardised way of giving permission to share and use their work. There are six different licences to choose from, all of which allow the user to, at least:

copy the work; distribute it; display or perform it publicly; make digital public performances of it and/or shift the work into another format as a verbatim copy

To find Creative Commons resources, look for sites that incorporate a Creative Commons licence logo, such as these: